The Acorn  

Where we stand

In a land of over a billion minorities, the Indian republic—which owes its existence to the loftiest moral struggle in modern times—presents the best hope for the well-being and development of all its citizens. The survival, security and strengthening of the Indian nation and its institutions, therefore, is not only a matter of supreme moral consequence, but of immense human importance.

Frequently imperfect application, repeated attempts at its perversion and creeping cynicism about its effectiveness must not prevent us from recognising that the Constitution of India offers an enlightened way for us to organise our society and ensure the greatest welfare of all citizens. Surely this is something worth defending. We at The Indian National Interest community strongly believe so.

The above lines are from the inaugural editorial of Pragati. Today is a good day to renew our commitment.

Cadres are competing to out-tough each other

“So much bungling in such a short period of time—from a regime that is seen as a deliberate, strategic player—rules out mere incompetence” this blog wrote in July this year. “While an outright leadership struggle is be unlikely, it could well be that a fratricidal war of succession is raging in Beijing.”

Well, the Sydney Morning Herald’s John Garnaut reports that’s what is going on. (via The Peking Duck & The Paper Tiger)

There are some well-connected political observers in Beijing who believe that the party’s recent across-the-board political and security tightening, including a ruthless attack on the legal profession, is linked to efforts by the vice-president, Xi Jinping, to secure the leadership of the country by 2012.

They say Xi is desperately wooing the hardliners, mainly allies of former president Jiang Zemin, who control the party’s core security apparatus: internal security, propaganda and the military. Xi’s immediate goal is to lock in a promotion to be vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission this month, in time for the National Day military extravaganza on October 1. President Hu Jintao received the same promotion at the same point in his transition to the leadership in 2002.

Beyond Xi, senior party figures are manoeuvring to get themselves or their allies into the nine-member Politburo Standing Committee by the time of the next party congress in 2012. Everywhere, cadres are competing to out-tough each other.

The internal competition is more unpredictable than usual because the party no longer has any god-like revolutionary heroes to defer to. [SMH]

The Obama administration is demonstrating poor judgement in appointing Robin Raphel to a sensitive position

“Despite nearly universal misgivings about the Taliban movement,” said the senior US state department official, “it must be acknowledged as a significant factor in the Afghan equation and one that will not simply disappear anytime soon.

The Taliban control more than two-thirds of the country; they are Afghan, they are indigenous and, they have demonstrated staying power. The reasons they have succeeded so far have little to do with military prowess or outside military assistance. Indeed, when they have engaged in truly serious fighting, the Taliban have not fared so well.

The real source of their success has been the willingness of many Afghans, particularly Pashtuns, to tacitly trade the unending fighting and chaos for a measure of peace and security, even with severe social restrictions.” [US Embassy in Israel]

And towards the end of her speech, came the memorable line: “If we wish them to moderate their policies, we should engage with them.”

That was Robin Raphel speaking at the United Nations in November 1996. In a chapter in Fundamentalism Reborn, journalist Richard MacKenzie writes:

In a recent Newsweek report, Steve LeVine writes that until Kabul fell, the US administration seemed ‘unconcerned about the Taliban’s growth’. He added, ‘Some midlevel State Department officials applauded the movement’s campaign for law and order, despite the mullahs’ knuckle-dragging views on women’s rights’. Certainly what one staunch critic (in an interview with the author) called a ‘cabal’ at the State Department was not as enlightened as their brothers and sisters at the CIA. Assistant Secretary Robin Raphel and two of her staff gave good impressions of being at least occasional cheer leaders for the Taliban.”

Mr MacKenzie concludes that paragraph on Ms Raphel’s department with this: “In one encounter a few months before the Taliban entered Kabul, a mid-level bureaucrat at the State Department claimed to this writer that ‘You get to know them and you find they really have a great sense of humour’, apparently believing the words he was uttering.” [Fundamentalism Reborn]

“The entire chain of command in Afghanistan”, from Ms Raphel down to the Afghan desk officer, “all retired or were reassigned in the summer of 1997″ after Madeleine Albright replaced Warren Christopher as Secretary of State in the second Clinton administration. By 1999, the US acknowledged that the “Taliban are the wrong horse to ride for bringing peace and stability in Afghanistan.”

You would have thought that the United States would have learnt its lessons—not least after the Taliban’s guests conducted some unannounced modifications to the urban landscape in Manhattan and Washington, DC in the autumn of 2001. Almost eight years after 9/11, it turns out that the Obama administration intends to ride the wrong horse again. The idea of engaging with the ‘moderate Taliban’ is back in vogue again.

The potential appointment of Ms Raphel as the special envoy’s special envoy to Af-Pak is ostensibly to monitor US financial assistance to Pakistan under the Kerry-Lugar plan. While it is sensible to assign the job to a Pakistanphile, the prudence of appointing a former lobbyist on Islamabad’s payroll, with a dubious attitude towards the Taliban, to a position that involves fiduciary responsibilities is, to put it mildly, questionable. American taxpayers and their elected representatives in the Senate must scrutinise this appointment. More so because her unstated portfolio might well be to, yet again, engage with the ‘moderate’ Taliban.

Ms Raphel’s anti-India positions (via Raman’s Strategic Analysis)on Jammu & Kashmir in the early 1990s has not endeared her to India. As long as Richard Holbrooke keeps her as far away from India as possible, her appointment need not directly concern New Delhi. If, on the other hand, the Obama administration decides to place her in any role involving relations with India, then it must be treated as an unfriendly move.

…shouldn’t be taken seriously anymore

It is about time the Pakistani government—as indeed some of the country’s more enlightened newspaper editors—stopped this ridiculous business of asking for evidence and promising legal action. These demands may be a fig leaf to cover their own impotence against their military establishment, but they only have the effect of reinforcing the impression that the language of diplomacy is merely a frivolous sideshow when it comes to engaging Pakistan.

So if the good people of Pakistan want to begin to prove that their demand for ‘proper’ evidence is driven by bona fide concerns, here’s what they should do: extradite to India Dawood Ibrahim (a.k.a Sheikh, Dawood Hasan) against whom there is an outstanding Interpol red corner notice. It might even be in line with the late Benazir Bhutto’s promises.

If President Zardari and his government wish to be seen as credible interlocutors then it is about time they dispensed with this routine. If it fails to act forcefully against terrorists of various stripes that operate out of Pakistan, then it must be prepared to cede authority to an international coalition that will.

Related Posts: How evidence becomes credible.

Non-interference and its unhappy consequences

It’s not over until it’s over—and there is some fight left in the LTTE yet—but judging from available news reports, it is clear that the Tamil Tigers are cornered in Kilinochchi and a few other towns. The ripples of the situation have crossed the Palk Strait and have already rocked politics in Tamil Nadu state. There is a risk that they will rock the UPA government in New Delhi.

It has come to this pass because the UPA government’s policy paralysis on Sri Lanka. As the The Acorn had warned at that time, the critical moment was in December 2005. Failure to rein in the combatants at that time led to the inevitable war and bloodshed. Failure to coerce the Tamil Tiger leadership to give up its maximalist aims caused it to break the ceasefire. Failure to intervene pushed the Sri Lankan government into the arms of Pakistan, China and Iran for military support. India was too timid to support or oppose any one side. As a result it not only finds itself as little more than a bystander, grasping for ways it could avoid the consequences of the Sri Lankan civil war from destabilising Tamil Nadu, and indeed, New Delhi.

Let’s be clear about one thing: that the Tamil Tigers (not to mention the Sri Lankan Tamils) find themselves in this situation is due to the fault of their leadership. Velupillai Prabhakaran did not take advantage of the international mediation to transform the rather successful insurgency into a political process towards autonomy within a federal setup, at least as a first step. The LTTE’s sympathisers might argue that it was the Sri Lankan government that upped the ante: even so, Mr Prabhakaran’s failure to reject violence and keep the international peace brokers on his side allowed President Rajapakse to prosecute the war. In the event, rather successfully. And for all the drama in Chennai, the cornered LTTE leadership is yet to directly call for a ceasefire.

Now, as T S Gopi Rethinaraj has argued in the April 2008 issue of Pragati, as also in a recent op-ed in Hindustan Times, the prospect of a military victory for the Sri Lankan government can have negative consequences for India’s geopolitical interests. It is conceivable that a jubilant Sri Lankan government will swing over to its Chinese and Pakistani patrons. It will also not have any reason to deliver on its promises of equal treatment of its Tamil minorities. By this token, the survival of the Tamil Tigers is India’s insurance policy against this eventuality.

In fact, had the Indian government understood the realist logic underpinning Dr Gopi Rethinaraj’s arguments, it would have played a stronger role to freeze the balance of power in Sri Lanka in 2004-2005 and transform it into a political settlement. It didn’t. So it finds itself in an exceedingly satisfactory position now. It can’t close its eyes to the new reality on the ground—one of the Sri Lankan government achieving a victory on its own terms. But it also cannot ignore the reality that the war-ravaged Tamil minority will have to live under the victor’s rules. Despite their promises, it is by no means clear that the Rajapakse government will pursue an enlightened policy towards the Tamils and move towards healing the decades old ethnic conflict that underlies the civil war.

Whether the LTTE is practically wiped out in the coming weeks or manages to turn the tide of the war in its favour, India must set aside its policy of non-intervention into one of engagement. On the one hand, it must try to cobble up a Sri Lankan Tamil political formation that can play the part that the LTTE didn’t. And on the other, it must deepen its engagement with the Sri Lankan government in all spheres, to ensure that it can guarantee that Colombo keeps its word. It’s not going to be easy: there are few Sri Lankan Tamil leaders of the required stature, and elements within the Rajapakse government might well say “no, thank you”. But what alternatives does India have?

Connecting liberalism, nationalism and realism

Let’s start with an axiom: all individuals are free, and from this freedom, they possess certain inalienable rights. They possess these rights and freedoms at all times, but in a state of nature, their ability to enjoy the freedom and exercise the rights is circumscribed by their individual power. In Indian philosophy, the state of nature is termed as matsya nyaya, or the law of the fishes, a condition under which the stronger fish eats the weaker fish. Thomas Hobbes, the 17th century English philosopher, describes this as the time when “men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war as is of every man against every man (bellum omnium contra omnes).” Life, therefore, is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

To better enjoy their rights and freedoms, individuals trade-off a part of their freedom for the security offered by a state. Hence Kautilya writes

People suffering from anarchy as illustrated by the proverbial tendency of a large fish swallowing a small one (matsyanyayabhibhutah prajah), first elected Manu, the Vaivasvata, to be their king; and allotted one-sixth of the grains grown and one-tenth of merchandise as sovereign dues. Fed by this payment, kings took upon themselves the responsibility of maintaining the safety and security of their subjects (yogakshemavah), and of being answerable for the sins of their subjects when the principle of levying just punishments and taxes has been violated.[Arthashastra I:13]

In Western philosophy, this trade-off forms the basis of social contract theories. In Leviathan, Hobbes argues that individuals cede all their rights in return for protection to a sovereign who is himself above the law. John Locke, writing after Hobbes, is more moderate: in his view, individuals surrender only some of their rights to a government that rules by the consent of the governed.

This trade-off forms the basis of modern liberal democratic states. The exact implementation differs from state to state, and depends on a number of factors. But most often, the social contract is codified in a constitution. Constitutions are not, and do not have to be either perfect or immutable. To varying degrees, they affirm the rights of the individual and offer an enlightened method to settle the differences between the interests of individuals. In sharp contrast to Hobbes’ Leviathan, modern constitutions also, to varying degrees, make the government itself subject to the rule of law.

The upshot is that the state is necessary for the practical enjoyment of individual rights and freedoms. The survival and security of the state—often termed “the national interest”—is directly connected to the ability of citizens to enjoy their freedom. Put in another way, the “national interest” is the well-being and development of all its citizens.

If we adopt this people-centric definition of the national interest, how should one regard territory? Is territorial integrity uncompromisable? Not quite. To the extent territory is necessary for the well-being and development of all citizens, holding the territory is in the national interest. Where territorial compromises enhance the well-being of citizens, they are in the national interest. In the state-centric formulation, the objective question is whether acquiring, keeping or parting with a particular piece of land enhances the survival and security of the state, or not.

While the establishment of a state allows individuals to enjoy their rights—abridged as they are—the relationship between states remains in the world of matsya nyaya or anarchy. To an extent, the development of international law and institutions like the United Nations allow states to pursue ‘rules-based’ relations. But the ultimate arbiter of international relations is power. It follows that to protect its national interests—whether expressed in the people-centric or state-centric terms—states have to maximise their power relative to others. This results in an international balance-of-power, which can be stable or unstable depending on the power dynamics obtaining at a particular moment in time. The objective of the state then, is to maximise its own power to ensure that the international balance-of-power is in its favour.

This is how liberalism, nationalism and realism are connected with each other. Liberalism (or libertarianism, in its American usage) is concerned about individual freedom. To enjoy freedom in practice, the individual gives up some of it to the state. The state, a nation-state in India’s case, exists to ensure the rights, freedoms and well-being (yogakshema) of its people. So ensuring the survival and security of the Indian state—by maximising its relative power internationally—is wholly consistent with allowing its citizens to live in freedom.

On the Naxalite threat

Excerpts from my op-ed piece in today’s Mail Today:

Now there has been a controversy brewing for several months over the arrest of Dr Binayak Sen. The Supreme Court has turned down his bail application, yet sections of the media have been projecting him as an innocent being victimised by the state. Quizzed about the affair, (Sudeep) Chakravarti contends that Dr Sen is a soft target for the state. “Having him in jail” he argues “allows the state government and police a victory in the face of organisational and security disasters on the ground. But this is a pyrrhic victory. It stifles a moderate voice, and has done nothing whatsoever to curtail or solve in any way either the raging Maoist rebellion in Chattisgarh or issues of development”

Innocent or guilty, only the courts can tell (and Dr Sen has unfettered access to them). But the media coverage of the affair is playing into the hands of the Naxalites. In the absence of a nation-wide anti-insurgency strategy, will critical media coverage compel Chattisgarh and other weak states to take a more enlightened, sophisticated route? Given the situation on the ground, that’s unlikely. The interests of freedom and rights will be better served if the central government is compelled to really fight and defeat the Naxalites.

And then there is the non-security aspect of the anti-Naxalite strategy, wrongly characterised as the need for “development”. It misses the point because people don’t resort to violence because they lack development. They do so when there is a lack of governance. [MailToday JPG/Get the entire article in PDF]

Discuss this on the recent post on Naxalites and human rights activists

The things you need to say in the interests of your country

It’s President Bush’s turn now:

In an astonishing defense of the now widely-reviled dictator, Bush told ABC News in an interview at his Camp David retreat: “So far I’ve found him to be a man of his word. He’s done more for democracy in Pakistan than any other modern leader has.” [TOI]

You might not have caught it, but that’s rather profound. So profound that interpreting it in language fit for the entire family is impossible.

What a time for General Musharraf. Here he was talking about enlightened moderation and root causes of terrorism the last few years, and all he got was calls to “do more” on this and that. No sooner does he impose martial law, jail politicians and lawyers, crack down on peaceful protestors and set free some really bad jihadis than, suddenly, the Indian foreign secretary absolves him of involvement in cross-border terrorism and the American president says he’s saving democracy. It is a mad, mad, mad, world indeed.

Update: Amit Varma’s take, in today’s Mint.

Or do you need generic Humorex?

General Musharraf certainly didn’t see the irony in his latest ‘mere azeez humwatanon’ speech. He invoked Abraham Lincoln to justify why saving the nation is more important than saving such niceties as the constitution, fundamental rights, media freedoms etc. And he claimed martial law was necessary to avoid “judicial interference” from impeding the “third phase” in Pakistan’s transition to democracy. Musharraf had to destroy the village to save it.

There’s even more irony blowing in from Swat in the tribal areas the North West Frontier Province. The leader of the tribal militia, labelled as Taliban or al-Qaeda to comfort Western audiences, is a certain Maulana Fazlullah. Before he began beheading Pakistani paramilitary troops and demanding the imposition of the strictest sharia, he had acquired the epithet of “Maulana FM Radio”. He used radio broadcasts to preach his brand of Islam and rouse the populace into rebellion. But in April 2007, he declared television and music to be unIslamic, causing over 10 thousand TV sets to be set on fire. Irony, apart, isn’t he depriving Osama bin Laden of an audience? In nearby Bajaur, fundamentalists have banned ring-tones. Cellular telephones, though, remain acceptable.

And there’s another irony: fundamentalists and “enlightened moderates” want televisions banned for their own reasons. Except, that is, when they are tuned to the right channel.

Update: Desipundit directs us to a guest post by General Musharraf on Rajeev’s Almanack:

I am Pakistan’s Lincoln. He suspended habeas corpus, I suspended the whole constitution. Same difference. I am Pakistan’s Gandhi. He disobeyed laws that he considered unjust and so do I. I am Pakistan’s Savior. Jesus Christ was a victim of Judicial Activism by Pontius Pilate. So am I the victim of extreme Judicial Activism by one Chaudhary. [Rajeev's Almanack]

…to Indian ears

She must have had the time to read the entire Harry Potter series during her years in exile. For she knows, at least, that the way to get past a otherwise ferocious watchdog is to lull it to sleep by playing music.

The harp Benazir Butto chose was CNN-IBN. Indian viewers who caught her interview with Karan Thapar would find her words music to their ears: Kashmir is a core issue yes, but moving forward on peace is important; winding up jihadi groups is in Pakistan’s interests, and India might even be given access to their leaders; and why, if Dawood Ibrahim was indeed in Karachi, she would ‘look into’ India’s request to hand him over, etc. Carefully hedged though her positions were, she was unmistakeably talking in a language that India wanted to hear. And as Thapar pointed out, it was very distinct from Nawaz Sharif’s declaration that all of Musharraf’s deals were invalid.

Bhutto, of course, is nothing if not a shrewd opportunist. She is likely to become prime minister in an act of political engineering orchestrated by, among others, the United States. Her party might well be the most popular, and elections might well be held in coming months, but they will lack legitimacy—both in the eyes of the Pakistani people, as well as in the international community. In such circumstances, it is vital for Bhutto to appear to be enlightened, moderate and above all peaceable towards India.

Her position is also consistent with public opinion in Pakistan. As a recent survey suggests, while Pakistani people still care a lot about Kashmir they care for their own political future a lot more. It remains to be seen whether her own stance on Kashmir and India, like that of the Pakistani people, will revert to age-old defaults if the political crisis gives way to relative stability.

While the Indian people might even believe in her change of heart, the security establishment is unlikely to be entirely persuaded. For it was during her first term that the ISI stoked terrorism in Jammu & Kashmir; and it was during her second term that the Taleban became a political force in Afghanistan. Clearly, she believed that terrorism and militancy was in Pakistan’s interests then. Her change of heart may even be real and driven by realism—for sponsoring terrorism is against Pakistan’s interests now—but is still not credible. Her actions after assuming power will be the real test of her U-turn.